Liberal hopefuls watch Wikis by Jane Taber, Globe and Mail (July 31) [Subscription required]
The strategists for leadership hopefuls of the Canadian Liberal party are watching the entry in Wikipedia -- "Endorsements for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention, 2006". They may be watching but not necessarily updating.
"Ignatieff campaign director Ian Davey said his camp looks at the site but does not contribute to it. The campaign prefers to announce endorsements strategically to "help build momentum," but it does have an Internet team.
"It's a huge part of politics now," Mr. Davey said. "What messages are out there, what people are saying, the whole blogging community, we follow it extremely closely." "
Following the discussion for this entry in Wikipedia and the history is even more interesting.
Whose Video Is It, Anyway? by Heather Green, Business Week Online (Jul 26) -- "YouTube's runaway success has opened a Pandora's box of copyright issues"
YouTube, the video-sharing center, was sued for copyright infringement in July by Robert Tur, an independent photographer.
"The dustup spotlights the role the Internet increasingly is playing in letting artists and other individuals reach out and control media. But more to the point, it shows how YouTube is evolving into a sort of eBay (EBAY) for video: the first place you go to find a clip, but also a place where more folks are itching to get rewarded for supplying it. A growing group of creative types is furiously producing clips, video blogs, and animated shorts with the hopes of making money through advertising or selling DVDs."
Searching for Order in the Blogosphere By Leslie Walker, Washington Post (July 27) -- Overview of the leading blog search sites = Google Blog Search ( http://blogsearch.google.com ), Icerocket ( http://www.icerocket.com ), Feedster ( http://www.feedster.com ) and Technorati ( http://www.technorati.com ) - as well as the new Sphere, which may become the new "Google of the blogosphere".
Technorati ranks results by links to the blogs in the tradition set by Google.
"Sphere, on the other hand, goes a few steps further -- analyzing and giving weight to the actual words in each blog posting, to the length and frequency of posts to a blog, and to how often the individual blogger writes about the subject being queried."
Is .mobi only half a whale? By Matt Lake, CNet (Jul 24) -- Seems that ICANN authorized the use of .mobi as the top level domain for web sites (presumably) intended for mobile users. The mobile companies liked the idea - Ericsson, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, T-Mobile, and Vodafone. In fact it probably confuses the domain naming even more - should that be .com, .biz, .info, .mobi?
As it is, the mobile providers - Verizon, Sprint, Cingular - aren't very open in what they will allow their users. Article also mentions some sites that are geared to mobile users.
Is Social Bookmarking Worth Paying for? Amy Gahran, Poynter Online (Jul 25) Netscape morphed into a news site a la Digg in June where readers weigh in. Jason Calcanis, the new head of Netscape, is offering lead users of major social news / bookmarking sites money to post to Netscape.
So here's the question -- "In short, is it worth it to pay smart, dedicated people to provide a steady stream of entries into a social bookmarking services or similar tool? I think so. In fact, I think as media continues to evolve to become more participatory, collaborative, and conversational, this kind of filtering role will become an essential part of how many organizations -- not just news organizations -- function."
More on the Digg vs Netscape conflict over paying contributors at Netscape in this blog posting by Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail -- It's Digg vs Netscape.
Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, Part 2 Read / Write Web (Jul 25)
"We think the ideas showcased by these new social search apps are worth embracing, to ensure the future growth of the search industry. And, as we note at the end of this post, the big search companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) think so too... "
Diigo Offers "Social Annotation" Tool Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Jul 26)
"Diigo ... combines a number of really useful tools and tasks into a simple but powerful interface. It's also a pure-bred web 2.0 service, offering easily customization (via Ajax) to more fully suit your own individual needs."
Get Relief From Annoying E-Mail Avoid large file attachments; protect yourself from spam and dopey messages. by Steve Bass, PC World (July 2006)
"Do associates e-mail you humongous attachments? Do dopey friends not know how to blind-copy e-mail to protect your privacy? I have a few ways for you to be less annoyed--and less annoying."
Always good advice from Steve Bass.
Searchforvideo 3.0 Available With New Design and Video Search Experience, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Jul 25)
"Searchforvideo 3.0 introduces a new website design across several popular video categories simplifying the discovery and viewing of free online video clips. Each video category displays more video clips, video publishers and updates more frequently throughout the day as new video links are found and posted to the site."
Google vs. Yahoo: A case of different strokes By Saul Hansell The New York Times via International Herald Tribune (Jul 23)
"Do Internet users prefer services that are consistent and predictable, or are they more interested in the "wow" factor?
These differences in Web products define a crucial front in the battle for online loyalty between Google and Yahoo, the major players in Internet searches."
Google has made some changes to its blog reader -- Your wish is our command, Google Blog (Jul 19)
Technorati turns 3, rolls out a major update, SIfry's Alerts (Jul 24) -- David Sifry guides readers through the new features and updates at Technorati for blog searching.
Of particular interest:
"# We've added in lots of features to help you make sense of the blogosphere, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives YOU the power to pick your favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
# We've made some big changes to blog profiles - allowing you to get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks, including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati ranking."
Latest report from OneStat shows that people are using more words in their search queries. 59.66% of queries are 3 words or more compared to 56.98% in July 2005. Canadians are the lowest one-word searchers at 5.36%.
Also see Only 11 Percent Of Searchers Use One Word Queries, SEW blog (Jul 24)
AOL poised to offer more free services, AP Via Yahoo News (Jul 24) AOL may move more of its content onto the public web for the advertising revenue. But what will happen to its subscription accounts?
"Time Warner Inc.'s board is expected to review on Thursday a proposal for its AOL LLC online unit to make even more services free, likely including the vaunted AOL.com e-mail accounts, in hopes of boosting advertising."
JotSpot Launches JotSpot 2.0 EContent (Jul 25)
"JotSpot, an application wiki company, has announced the immediate availability of JotSpot 2.0, the next-generation of its wiki application platform. JotSpot 2.0 gives users the ability to collaborate on all types of information. JotSpot 2.0 provides new "page types" designed to help users create collaborative calendars, spreadsheets, file repositories, documents, and photo galleries."
Gmail to the Max: Helpful Tips, Tricks, and Hacks -- Learn to use Gmail's features to their fullest potential. -- by Scott Spanbauer, PC World (Jull 24)
Which New Browser Is Best: Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7, or Opera 9?, Publish (Jul 19) -- very detailed review of features and performance of these three browsers. None is clearly superior over the other - "Users will reap some benefits from upgrading to any of these browsers, and all are excellently engineered, well-working software with lots of convenience, capability, and security." However, since Firefox 2 and IE 7 are still in beta, it might be good to wait for the final version.
NET SENSE: Cracking the social network code Commentary: Communities will likely drive ad growth, Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Jul 25)
Not too long ago, Google, following Overture's lead, adopted sponsored search - ads that are based on amount advertiser pays and the popularity of the ad. Francisco sees the next big source of revenue to come from displaying ad on the social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube where more people are gathering and spending time. It's like putting an ad in a bus station.
"By 2008, we might just be saying that one of the fastest growing online ad opportunities is what I'll call "search-filtered display ads." In other words, marketers will increasingly take someone's search history or search behavior, and use that information to target ads on social network pages they browse."
$65,000 study nets obvious answer about web "Federal government paid pollster to conclude people use search engines to find websites" Ottawa Citizen (July 24)
Duh - Health Canada paid The Strategic Counsel $65,000 to find out "the impact and recall of vanity URLs." Health Canada may have been considering obtaining a new domain name so that people could more readily find their site. However, the study's conclusion suggests that it really doesn't matter - people look for web sites through search engines rather than chancing on remembering a url or, I presume, using bookmarks.
That's how I re-find sites - just plug in the name at Google - and 99% of the time the desired site shows in the first spot.
This study also questioned the domain name used by the Government of Canada, gc.ca, since people didn't seem able to remember it.
"The federal government site was even more problematic: "There was very little spontaneous recall of the Government of Canada website. Guesses range from ocanada.ca to canada.gov.ca to gouvcanada.ca. The .gc extension is always forgotten."The report later recommended the federal government consider changing the current "gc" suffix in www.canada.gc.ca address to "www.gov.canada.ca". It cites the U.S. government's "www.us.gov" site as an example of the use of "gov" rather than "gc.""
gov somewhere in the domain name is used in many countries - United Kingdom uses gov.uk, Australia is gov.au. Canada chose .gc as a compromise between .gov and .gouv in order to be language neutral. It's not a bad solution. Let's just get on with improving the content and services of those web sites so that people will want to find them and making sure that they will place well in the search engine results.
Thanks to LT for the news item.
Know it All - Can Wikipedia conquer expertise by Stacy Schiff, New Yorker (July 24, 2006) --
In depth article on Wikipedia, now the 17th most popular site on the Internet, that looks at its origins, its successes, its operation, its failings, and its competitors. Wikipedia is chaotic, it's anti-authority, it's self policing (but needs a lot of policing), some entries may be brilliant and others ignorant or intentionally wrong.
The founder, Jimmy Wales, says he's on a mission to "distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language". Larry Sanger, who once worked with Wales on the Wikipedia, has said that many contributors work from opinion rather than expertise. Schiff concludes that "Wikipedia remains a lumpy work in progress" where entries are amateurly written and without rigor.
There is a gaming going on people make changes to rack up their scores as editors. While there are 200,000 registered users for the English-language section, less than 2% do 70% of the work. One person, a 24-year old graduate of the University of Toronto, has editeed or written more than 72,000 articles.
Schiff asked Jorge Cauz, president of Britannica, to compare Britannica to Wikipedia - "Wikipedia is to Britannica as 'American Idol' is to the Julliard School". Wales responeded: "Wikipedia is to Britannica as rock and roll is to easy listening".
These are early years. Wikipedia went online in 2001. Will it still be online in 2011 or, as the novelty wears off and people lose interest in the mission, will it fade into disuse the way the Open Directory Project has?
Prefound: Another Social Bookmarking and Sharing Site by Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Jul 10) -- Examines PreFound, a social search centre where people share their collections. As Price commented - students and teachers could use this for "dynamic webliographies". ResourceShelf itself uses PreFound as a place to keep its list of RealTime Databases .
Airport Directories, Airline Abbreviations, Seating Guides, and More Travel Reference ResourceShelf (Jul 18) - Gary Price does a lot of travelling. These databases for checking flights, airlines and airports are likely very good.
One of them - seatguru.com - for plane configurations was Deryk King's, CEO of Direct Energy, "secret travel tip" in an interview (jul 19). "A website called seatguru.com that covers the seating arrangements of all major airlines with commentaries by people who travel a lot."" (Jul 19)
New From Ask.com: RSS Smart Answers, Latest Links Directly on Results Web Results Pages, ResourceShelf (Jul 20)
"In a nutshell, when you now enter the title of a blog or feed, the three most current headlines are placed at the top of the Ask.com results page, before the ads and before the organic links. These headlines are updated in near real time."
Try it with ResourceShelf.
Information Research July 2006 has some articles of interest related to web searching.
Fast surfing for availability or deep diving into quality - motivation and information seeking among middle and high school students, Jannica Heinström -- found "Students with a surface approach prioritized easily available sources, deep students were aware of quality aspects, and strategic students organized and structured their searches."
Scholarly use of information: graduate students' information seeking behaviour by Carole George, Alice Bright, Terry Hurlbert, Erika C. Linke, Gloriana St. Clair and Joan Stein -- Students look to their professors first . Of course "The Internet plays a major role, although students continue to use print resources. Convenience, lack of sophistication in finding and using resources and course requirements affect their information behaviour."
New Search Tools on Tap at DEMO "A bevy of entrepreneurs are hoping you'll adopt their new technologies." By Esther Schindler, IT Business Net (Feb 9)
Report on DEMO conference that profiled several new kinds search engines: verticals (Krugle for software code), social search (Plum for grabbing things from the web and sharing). There are several mentioned that deal in tags - Riya which automatically tags photos; tagworld.com - mainly for teens; rawsugar.com - tagging entries in blogs and using those tags in search.
Ask.com gaining market share - In this video, Bambi Francisco interviewed CEO Jim Lanzone about Ask's share of the search market and specifically growth in the number of searches done at Ask.com.
Oddly, according to Nielsen Net Ratings, Ask's share of all searches in the U.S. was 2.3%, down from 2.6%. Lanzone claims that number of searches being done at Ask.com is increasing faster as a percentage than at any other engine. Comscore figures for June showed a gain of 130% although a drop in share to 5.1%.) While the increase in usage is impressive, Ask.com is dealing with much smaller numbers. It needs to show through better market share figures that people prefer it over others. Will this ever happen?
Lanzone described Ask's methods to attract more people, one of which is to put fewer ads and to distribute Ask results on IAC's web properties. It intends to be an "everyday search engine", rather than be just a place for questions and answers when it was Ask Jeeves. Claims to be focused on core search - "what searchers need most".
This seems to me to be playing with words. Mainly it wants to be a destination for consumer search - everyday popular searches - entertainment, news, maps. It's reasonably good at that, but it doesn't have the depth or relevance ranking success of Google or even Yahoo. It's hard to see Ask.com as a first tier search engine.
Also see Comscore Google’s U.S. Search Market Share Continues to Climb in June; Yahoo! Also Posts Gains
Neilsen/Netratings figures for search engines, June 2006:
Google hanlded 2.67 billion searches in June, up 31% from last year. 49.4% of all searches
Yahoo searches were 1.24 billion, up 24% but still putting Yahoo in #2 spot. 29%
MSN Search: 555.6 million searches, up 3%. 10.3%
Nielsen/NetRatings: Google logs 2.67 billion June searches, Marketwatch (Jul 21)
Google put the camera on librarians in its July newsletter. It has created a short movie on stories told by librarians about ways to use Google more productively and supplemented by text . There is also a new newsletter for teacher librarians. At least Google recognizes their importance: "Google recognizes the central role teachers play in breaking down the barriers between people and information, and we support educators who work each day to empower their students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge."
The MySpace Ecosystem by Steve Rosenbush, Business Week ONline (July 21) "Its user audience has tripled since News Corp. acquired the site last year. Now, new third-party partners could help it maintain the pace of growth."
MySpace.com is a raging successwith 54 million unique users in a month. They blog and message and save photos and listen to music. They are soon to get more through agreements with third-party companies -- ""Now, MySpace is beginning to create its own ecosystem of third-party companies that are developing features and applications for the giant digital community, according to a new report from analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Research."
-- "Now the site, where people communicate via home pages laden with messages, photos, blogs, music, and more, has 54 million unique monthly users, according to researcher comScore Media Metrix."
Podcast.com offers Canadian podcast showcase Globe and Mail (July 20)
Podcast.com, a Boston-based company, has collected podcasts done by Canadians. "This showcase serves to accentuate and highlight the work of Canadian audio and video podcasters who had already created one of the first countrywide grassroots communities around podcasting." Site is http://canada.podcast.com/. CBC Radio podcasts are part of this collection.
Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers by Amanda Lenhart and Susanna Fox, PEW
There are a lot of bloggers on the Internet and many do it just to talk about their lives. In earlier studies, PEW found that about 12 million American adults have blogs (8% of adult internet users) and 57 million read them (39% of the online population).
Now we learn that they are young (54% under the age of 30), that they blog personal experiences (76%) and in particular their lives (37%), though there are single digit percentages for peopl blogging about politics, technology, sports, a hobby or other interest.
Of interest: ""Blogs are as individual as the people who keep them, but this survey shows that most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression," said Lenhart. "Blogs make it easy to document individual experiences, share practical knowledge, or just keep in touch with friends and family.""
A Closer Look at Windows Live Local by Greg Sterling, SearchDay (July 20) -- runs through the main features at Windows Live Local - the bird's eye view of places, the ability to save searches with various points of interest, a "locate me" function, and traffic for certain cities.
Windows Live Local is best for the United States. But it does have aerial views of some European cities (London and Paris). It doesn't appear to have aerial views or traffic for Canadian places.
Of interest: "Currently of the top four mapping sites, Microsoft is in fourth position in terms of traffic, according to comScore. It goes, Mapquest, Yahoo, Google and WLL in that order. Mapquest is the least dynamic of the four but still dominant. Part of that is the brand and consumer habit and part of it is the use case. Most consumers have not discovered the full utility of mapping sites as a starting point for local search. The dominant use case today remains driving directions after I've decided where I want to go."
Google Now Offering Accessible Search, ResearchBuzz (jul 19)
Google Accessible will rank results that are more easily used by blind or visually impaired users.
Database of Sources at The Virtual Chase has been completed. The Virtual Chase has excellent guides to doing company research and finding peopel
From the newsletter: "Released in beta during April of this year, the
database contains abstracts and links to Web-based sources of
information for conducting research on companies or people and for
finding legal or factual information. You may browse the database by
subject or search it by keyword. The old research guides will remain available for some time, but we will no longer update them."
New Become.com 'Search Zoom' Feature Categorizes Web Search Results MarketWire via Marketwatch (July 19)
"Become.com, the only vertical search engine to combine Web-wide product-focused search with comparison shopping, today announced "Search Zoom," a new feature that lets customers sort and prioritize research results by information type. Users can select the product information that is most relevant to them from several categories: buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and product details. Become.com provides a one stop resource for product research and comparison shopping by offering more than 3.2 billion web pages of product information combined with 20 million products from nearly 5000 merchants."
Yahoo does deal with Zillow.com Associated Press via Globe and Mail (July 19) Yahoo's online real estate portal now links to Zillow.com for information on home values. Look for Free Instant Home Valuations and Comparables.
"Zillow.com calculates its estimates — used by potential buyers and sellers, as well as those just curious about their neighbors — based on county records and other data."
StumbleUpon, Inc. Announces New Internet Explorer Extension; IE Users Can Now 'Stumble' to Discover Internet's Best Websites -- Company Surpasses One Million Subscribers and Adds RSS Support, Expects Millions More With Internet Explorer Release -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (July 18)
Firefox users have been having fun with Stumbleupon, a way of coming upon interesting sites based on what you say you like or dislike. Now IE users can too.
As well Stumbleupon produces RSS feeds that "enable users to track other users' favorite sites, reviews of any site on the Internet, and finally, new website submissions from the StumbleUpon Community".
Go to www.stumbleupon.com to download the Firefox or Internet Explorer toolbar extensions.
Intute looks ready. This is the new face to the much respected Resource Discovery Network in the UK.
"The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 113544 records."
At present Intute has collections in science and technology, arts and humanities, social sciences, and health and life sciences.
One of its projects is to update the Internet research tutorials over the coming year. Follow the news page through the RSS feed.
To Each Search Engine Its Own Algorithms by Enid Burns, Clickz (July 17) -- Fortune Interactive has analysed the factors that influence ranking of organic results at Google, Yahoo and MSN.
It matters who links to the page. "Inbound link quality is the only factor with the same relative influence across the board; Google, Yahoo and MSN's algorithms. The engines look at a target site to determine the influence and reputation of each inbound link."
Technophilia: Find great podcasts by Wendy Boswell, Lifehacker (July 10)
Cleverly written article on finding best and most interesting podcasts on the web.
Source: Find Great Podcasts, SearchEngineWatch blog
Microsoft Is First CrossRef Web Services Search Partner , Newbreaks (July 16)
"CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org), the cross-publisher linking network with more than 1,600 participating publishers, announced that it had reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp., which will become the first official CrossRef Web Services Search Partner. CrossRef will provide Microsoft with a bulk feed of metadata from hundreds of participating CrossRef member publishers. Microsoft is using CrossRef Web Services to assist in the indexing of scholarly content for Windows Live Academic Search, a beta of which launched in April 2006 (http://academic.live.com)."
OCLC to Open WorldCat Searching to the World by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (July 17)
"In a move designed to reach users outside library environments, OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) is planning to launch a new destination site and downloadable search box for searching the content of libraries participating in WorldCat. Scheduled for a beta release sometime in August 2006, the new WorldCat.org site will continue OCLC’s efforts begun with its Open WorldCat program"
Site will be at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/dotorg/default.htm
Yahoo Finance gets a face-lift, by Elinor Mills, CNet (July 16)
Yahoo Finance received a substantial upgrade for the first time in 5 years "with new interactive stock charts, improved message boards and business-related video clips from content partners."
Yahoo finance gets new look at Blogma (July 17)
Recording: "Invisible Web: How to Move Beyond the First Search Result" by Dan Balzer, Dennis O'Connor and Carl Heine
"This recorded webcast session led by the 21st Century Information Fluency Project unpacks the "invisible web". We look at core concepts for helping searchers reach beyond the first search engine result, explore ways to teach the invisible web in the classroom and library, and use new game-based approaches that teach 21st century search skills to today's learners."
Recording is available through Learning Times. [Subscription required.] Webinar is done using Elluminate. It's quite good. Recommended especially for people who are training others in web searching.
Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Available, Google Operating System (July 12)
"The first beta of Firefox 2.0, codenamed Bon Echo, is now available. The most interesting features of the new version are: inline spell checking - Firefox underlines the errors and suggests alternatives, the new search bar integrates Google Suggest (and also a similar feature for Yahoo) and lets you manage search engines much easier, session restore - if the browser crashes, it will open the previous tabs when you restart."
Has screenshots.
No need to rush to try this, but interesting to know what is coming. Most of the new function (maybe all?) is available through extensions.
IHT Lets You Roll Your Own Podcast. Or Not., ResearchBuzz (Jul 12)
"The International Herald Tribune has started a service that allows you to select the stories you want to hear, and listen to or download them." Register for this at http://audionews.iht.com - it's very simple but you might only be able to get one story per podcast.
Answers.com now supports natural language queries. It has a new feature called Web Answers which "enables quick retrieval of short, to-the-point answers in response to natural-language questions (Who, What, When, How, etc)".
"Web Answers analyzes the user's question and identifies pages on the web that contain sentences or phrases that appear to answer the specific question. Using a scoring system by which it assigns confidence levels to candidate answers, it builds a list of relevant snippets from these pages."
This is based on software acquired in the purchase of Brainboost, the natural language search engine.
Which is better: Answers.com or Brainboost? For the question "who invented the air conditioner", Web Answers says Frederick Jones but does not show the URL of the source, although there is a link to it. Brainboost has the same answers but does show the URL. Brainboost is more helpful because it also lists related questions that lead to other sets where we can tease apart multiple contenders - Willis Haviland Carrier, John Froelich, and Frederick Jones. This gives Brainboost the edge except that Answers.com also displays results from Google, which have the answers sprinkled through.
See also Answers.com Adds Natural-Language Searching, ResearchBuzz (Jul 12)
Net phone services falling short, BBC News (Jul 13) -- "Free phone calls via the net sound tempting but the technology is not ready for prime time, says a report." Report covers Skype (was considered the best), Yahoo, Sipgate, MSN, Google Talk, Babble.
Microsoft, Yahoo connect IM services by Elinor Mills, CNet (July 12)
Yahoo, Microsoft beta test instant message interoperability , Marketwatch (Jul 12) -- Wouldn't it be nice if the Yahoo and MSN IM services could talk to each other?
"The interoperability will form an instant-messaging community approaching 350 million accounts, the companies said. Yahoo and Microsoft added that they plan to make the interoperability between their IM services broadly available to consumers in the coming months."
SearchforVideo.com to Launch Video Podcast Directory; Video Search Engine Simplifies Finding and Downloading Video Podcasts Business Wire via MarketWatch (July 11)
"... SearchforVideo.com leverages both software intelligence and human editors to identify popular and entertaining videos. As the site aggregates freely available video links from over 10,000 public sources it contains millions of clips across a wide spectrum of genres and topics."
Web firms press visions of 'social search', by JEFFREY MCMURRAY, Globe and Mail (JUly 12)
Good distinction between search engines and social search -- "Traditional search results are largely based on objective criteria such as counting the number of links other sites have placed to a given Web page. Social search gives people subjective answers — the best sushi restaurant in Chicago or the best website for information about French impressionism — not necessarily the site visited the most."
Mentions some social search centres that are getting more attention: Prefound where users contribute lists of sites on a topic; StumbleUpon for finding popular sites; Google Co-op; Yahoo Answers.
MySpace Rules the Web by Enid Burns, Clickz (Jul 11)
"For the week ending July 8, MySpace had 4.46 percent market share of visits, making it the top site on the Internet. The social networking site surpassed widely-used Web-based e-mail and portal sites including Yahoo Mail (4.42 percent); Yahoo (4.25 percent); Google (3.89 percent) and MySpace's own e-mail site (2.85 percent). eBay ranks eighth on the list with 1.59 percent market share."
Other social networking sites are listed in this article.
Yahoo! Packs Its Bags by Rachel Rosmarin, Forbes (Jul 9) -- Yahoo Trip Planner site is live and waiting for you to add your travelogue (and to send you ads).
"Yahoo! hopes to lure surfers to the site using Silicon Valley's favorite gambit of the moment--user-generated content, this time in the form of user-generated travelogues and photos. “I don't know about any premium brand being associated with a 100% user-generated content product,” says Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo! Travel. “Advertisers tend to feel uncomfortable with user-generated content because it is unpredictable.”"
Google Health Scrapbook: Google's Health Portal, SearchEngineWatch blog (july 7) - rumours about a personal Google health portal.
Free Watson Search Tool from Intellext Goes Customizable, Ties to MySpace and Others -- Users Empowered to Create a Personal Search Tool with the Information Sources They Choose, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (July 10)
"Intellext(TM) ( http://www.intellext.com ) today announced that the new version 2.4 of its free Watson search tool is now fully customizable, allowing users to choose the information sources they want, creating their own personalized search tool. Prior to today, the customizability was available only in Watson Professional, the licensed version of the proactive search tool. In addition to traditional web search engines, blog search engines, news and shopping sites, users can now also tap into additional sources including networking sites MySpace and LinkedIn, and premium news sites like the Wall Street Journal."
Google Enters the Dictionary as a Verb, Newsfactor (July 7)
Will Google be the next coke, or kleenix, or hoover - just a generic word?
"In its 2005 annual report, Google actually acknowledged the trend to use its company name as a generic verb and warned in the report that its brand might get diluted as a result, potentially affecting the company's bottom line. "
Collection Development: H.W. Wilson Launches New Web Site (Free) For Librarians: Standardcatalogs.com, ResourceShelf (july 6)
"Standardcatalogs.com is a free clearinghouse for tools for collection development: “Best” lists, Editors’ picks, hot topics, periodicals lists, best professional books, librarian home pages and blogs, profiles of editors (and others) who shape the Wilson Standard Catalogs, and more."
Search Engine Accoona launched in Europe by Lars Våge, Pandia (July 4)
Accoona, the "business" search engine with connections in China, has launched a European version - Accoona Europe - that can somewhat customize the display to the language of the European country - Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Netherland. (If you use it from Canada, you'll see English results drawn mainly from the UK.) Våge seems unimpressed by the engine - as I have always been - "Accoona is claiming that they are using artificial intelligence in order to improve their search results. Nevertheless, I find several irrelevant listings on the first page of search results using various search queries."
Strange Midpage See Also Results at Google, SearchEngine Showdown (Jul 6) - Google inserts "suggested results" halfway down a page on some searches. These are labelled "See Results". You can see this for yourself on a search for therapy products. In this instance, Google recommends Yahoo.
These have been around for a while. SearchEngineWatch blog reported on them on April 6 -- Google Confirms Midpage "See Results For" Results Out Of Testing -- What Should They Be Called?.
I haven't found a description of why Google introduced these or in what way they are supposed to benefit search. Certainly the benefit is not obvious.
NY Times Reports: Wikipedia Makes Some Revisions to its Own Editorial Policy; Free Full Text Access to Encarta Continues, ResourceShelf (June 17) - lots about encyclopedias: Wikipedia, Encarta, Britannica.
Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle Profiled in a New Article, ResourceShelf (June 23) - about Kahle, Internet Archive and Archive-It.
The Zoom List (Beta): An Autonomously Built Directory of Companies, Products and Services from ZoomInfo, ResourceShelf (June 27) - reviews the new Zoomlist directory of companies, products and services from Zoominfo.
Internet Resources Newsletter, July 2006 issue by Roddy MacLeod and others at Heriot-Watt University Library is online. This newsletter is always worth a few minutes of browsing time to find (or refind) new and notable sites and weblogs. It's aimed at "academics, students, engineers, scientists and social scientists" and is especially useful for librarians and information professionals.
Of interest:
The Book Cloud - make connections between books and genres
Create Change -- Get more from your academic research - site was developed by the Association of Research Libraries and SPARC
Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web - Margaret Vail Anderson is still adding sites.
And this month, the editors listed WebSearchGuide.ca and the Internet News blog as resources. Thanks Roddy.
Google Government Search, Now With State Filtering, ResearchBuzz (July 2) - tips on filtering searches by state using inurl at the new Google US Government search engine .
Compare Opera 9 Functionality with Extension-ed Firefox, Researchbuzz (July 4)
"Rijk van Geijtenbeek has created a very nice page at http://my.opera.com/Rijk/homes/blog/extensions.html . It’s a table that takes the top 150 Firefox Extensions and compares their functionality with Opera 9."
Net neutrality: bring it on, By Molly Wood, CNet (June 30) -- It's time for us to be concerned about telco and cable companies creating a tiered internet where they make the decisions on the content they will deliver. Molly Wood has some chilling reports on lies and misrepresentations by these companies in their efforts to prevent "net neutrality".
Of interest: "I now believe that we must have legislation to protect the open and equal nature of the Internet, or, sadly, the Internet must be regulated as a utility, just like the highways and the water pipes--and we must have one or the other right away. Why? Because I really believe that the telcos and the cable companies pushing for a tiered Internet will cheerfully turn the Internet into a lopsided disaster of have and have-not traffic that just happens to be filled with perfectly accessible content created by those very same telcos and cable companies. Basically, there's a pile of money on the table, and these folks are proving every day that they cannot be trusted."
Fifty Popular Science Blogs - list published by Nature.com. Ranking is from Technorati in July, but Nature.com has an article on the Top Five Science Blogs.
SEO Book Firefox Extension looks like a great tool for evaluating a web site. It shows age of the site, number of links to it according to Yahoo, Google page rank, blog subscriptions and more. Intended for search engine marketers, but would be useful to the discriminating searcher who needs to validate a site.
Described in SEO Black Hat (July 5)
More Googler Research Papers Compiled Online; Object-Level Verticals and Phlat “Personal” Searching (Demo) from MS, ResourceShelf (July 5)
Many good articles on search technology.
MyWay E-Mail Now Searchable, Resourceshelf (July 5)
Lists features at MyWay.com for email. This is possibly the best free web-based email service.
New Online Exhibition from Library and Archives Canada; Canada’s Virtual Gramophone Continues to Grow, ResourceShelf (July 5)
Aboriginal Documentary Heritage is the new online exhibit with essays concerning government administrative records (1872 - 1950s), treaties and agreements, and WW1.
Virtual Gramophone has 300 new audio files.
The Changing Face of the Scholarly Web: Finding Free, Quality, Full-Text Articles, Books, and More! [Available Full-Text, Free] by Robert J. Lackie, Multimedia and Internet Schools (July 1)
"This article will touch on and attempt to bring together pertinent resources on the free Web of interest to anyone, including librarians and other educators, who conducts research and would like to easily supplement their currently available holdings, in print and electronic formats and via commercial vendors' fee-based subscription databases, within their own libraries. Although somewhat limited by the directed scope and length of this article, I believe that the alphabetical listing of annotated links under each section should get you moving in the right direction!"
Seems to be a complete (or nearly so) listing.
Music to Soothe the Savage Searcher - "Classical Music Databases and Web Resources" - by David Mattison, Searcher (July/August
Another detailed and rich guide created by David Mattison at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria.
"The Web offers a wide variety of classical music resources, from audio files to downloadable music to encyclopedic Web sites, devoted to the European musical canon and its enduring influence, especially in North America. In selecting many of the sites, I focused more on composer rather than performer data. Because the sources are readily available through academic music libraries, I paid less attention to free and subscription-based bibliographic databases and print reference sources ..."
ResourceShelf provides some additional comments about Dave's selections and adds some of its own - Dave Mattison Offers a Look at Classical Music Resources on the Web
blinkx Partners with the History Channel UK Giving Users Access to Historical Programming on the Web -- Content Agreement Allows Users to Search Hours of Historical Audio and Video Content, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (July 3)
"blinkx's unique search technology connects users to The History Channel UK's wide range of audio and video content including a variety of historical audio clips including speeches from icons such as Franklin Roosevelt, JFK, Albert Einstein and Neil Armstrong as well as The History Channel UK's video picks of the week."
Unfortunately, it's not easy to browse or search Blinkx. You can select a group of sources or an individual source. Blinkx searches everything that has a green radial button. Click on groups to de-select. Then use the search box. The History Channel is listed under Entertainment.
Inside Google Book Search is a blog about just that. The debut post was by Arielle Reinstein, Associate Product Marketing Manager for Google Book Search.
Excerpt: "On that note, we're excited to announce Inside Google Book Search, the official Google Book Search blog. This blog is about discovery -- yours and ours. Here you'll find members of our team sharing thoughts, tips and the occasional announcement about Book Search. We intend for this to be a place not only for Book Search enthusiasts, but also book lovers of every stripe. We'll be highlighting cool books we've found, discoveries you've made, big thoughts about the future of book search and more."
Ixquick Makes Privacy Promises, ResearchBuzz (June 27)
"Ixquick has announced that they are going to permanently delete all personal search details gleaned for its users. This is in response to various privacy concerns and issues that have bene popping up all over the Internet."
Digging into the News by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 28)
"Social news site Digg has expanded from technology news into broad-based coverage of many popular topics, with stories ranked according to their popularity among Digg users."
New Players in Travel Search by Brian Smith, SearchDay (June 27) -- looks at two travel sites that might help make it easier to get best prices.
Farecast tries to predict airline prices. "Farecast has developed the latest travel search engine (similar to Kayak, Mobissimo, Sidestep and Farechase). With each search, all flight options are displayed on the search results page with links to book direct at airline websites as well as Orbitz."
FareCompare analyzes pricing data. "As opposed to the normal schedule driven approach, FareCompare is all about analyzing travel from a price driven perspective, allowing the flexible leisure traveler to get a better sense of when to book. "
France unveils national rival to Google Earth, Reuters UK (June 23)
"France unveiled a Web site (www.geoportail.fr) on Friday that allows people to access detailed satellite images of the country and said it offered more detail of its territory than Google Earth (www.earth.google.com)."
President Jacques Chirac -- "With Galileo (the European Union satellite navigation system), with the mobile telephone, services linked to global positioning will develop a lot. It is also about democracy because our citizens have the right to know all the facts about the environment."
This is certainly the French view of the world, showing St Pierre et Miquelon in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the French Caribbean islands, and others in Polynesia.
See also France's Géoportail Mapping Site: La Demande C'est Fantastique! by Greg Sterling, SEW Blog (Jun 25) - guide to using Geoportail.
Google, Kill The Web Search Counts!, Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (June 22)
Two things are amiss with Google these days - increased amount of spam being indexed, and erroneous counts from the site: command.
Is the amount of spam pushing out good pages? Sullivan thinks it could be happening.
Should Google stop reporting a record count on searches? Sullivan recommends Google do this and switch site count, at least, to the Google Sitemap service. This is aimed at webmasters who want to know more about what has been crawled at their sites. But Google could have a site explorer like Yahoo's Site Explorer.
"Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page."
While I think a Google Site Explorer could be useful, I would be unhappy to see Google drop record counts or the site search.
Site search is a useful advanced search technique for limiting results to a domain or combining a search across selected domains.
Record counts, even if they are only rough, do help in assessing coverage of a domain (such as the size of the Canadian index) or broad topic, and in appraising a particular search query. Unfortunately many searchers get over exercised about large counts - the figure merely indicates room for narrowing the search. Getting the count of small sets is important as a warning of too narrow a search.
Nielsen//NetRatings Stats Keep Google On Top In May 2006, SEW Blog (June 21) - May statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings on search engine standings for handling search requests. Google is still well in the lead at 49.1% but Yahoo had a slight gain to 22.9%.
Searching for Critical Acclaim by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 22)
Reviews Metacritic as a source for critical reviews of movies, television shows, books, and games.
"Metacritic is an excellent resource for finding critical information about film, video, music, games, books and television. It's mission is to help consumers make an informed decision about how to spend their money on entertainment, by providing access to thousands of reviews, as well as "metascores" that represent the collective opinion of a select group of highly respected critics—more on metascores in a moment."
Intuitive Search Capabilities and Structured Results: Only on YellowPages.ca, press release (June 20)
"Yellow Pages Group (YPG) has developed a unique online search platform, which allows users of YellowPages.ca™ to obtain structured results with unstructured queries. Like other search engines, users will now be able to perform intuitive searches with keywords like products, brands or even landmarks, while obtaining accurate results structured according to the needs expressed in numerous usability studies. Few other search engines deliver structured results like these."
The new version is at http://beta.yellowpages.ca/
I prefer the directory approach, still available at http://www.yellowpages.ca where one can browse the categories to get a better idea of words to use and are guided through choices of businesses and location. The old version breaks Toronto into regions such as Central West and Central East. The new does not. But the new will show possible categories and does have more breakdowns by products and services, brands, hours of operation and payment methods. The usefulness of these breakdowns will depend on the search. There is a proximity search feature to make it easier to find services near a specific address.
Google and MSN use Yellowpage data in their local Canada search services.
Hacking Flickr by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 21)
"You can do a lot more with Yahoo's popular photo sharing site Flickr than simply upload your own photos and browse images created by other users. A new book in O'Reilly's popular "Hacks" series shows you how." The book is Flickr Hacks , by Paul Bausch and Jim Bumgardner- has fifty tips and tricks for using Flickr. The O'Reilly site has some sample Flickr hacks.
Who's Who in Local Search by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 20)
Yellow Pages Association in New Jersey, USA, has put together an online guide to local search tools and providers.
"The Local Search Guide features profiles of 21 internet yellow pages providers, 21 search engines that offer some type of local search, 27 vertical directories that serve as an online index of local vendors in well-defined categories, and 30 search tool vendors, defined as companies that provide directory listings, transform existing print products to online content, combine Web services with VoIP and phone capabilities, or provide search capabilities through a network of users."
Review: Flock Browser , Michael W. Muchmore, ExtremeTech in Publish.com (June 20)
"The Flock browser is an attempt to bring some of the Web 2.0-style concepts right to the application that gives you a view of the interweb. Built on top of FireFox, Flock incorporates "mashups"—the hip buzzword for web service integration—with social bookmarks (with del.icio.us and Shadows), photo sharing (with Flickr and Photobucket), and blogging—with tools built into the browser for posting to your blog. In fact, it's this integration on which Flock's creators intend to build their business model, cutting deals with other web services."
Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple - Wetpaint and other wiki startups are offering free and easy-to-use tools. But will most consumers really care? - By Wade Roush, Technology Review (June 21)
"A Seattle startup called Wetpaint launched the newest Web-based "wiki" platform this week, offering people who register with the company the ability to create community websites that can be edited easily by any user, or by invited members only, depending on the creator's preference."
Google has published its fourth newsletter for librarians just in time for the ALA Conference. Welcome to the fourth issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter. It has some information about Google Book Search.
More comments about this at ResourceShelf - Web Search Briefs: New Issue of Google Newsletter for Libraries Online; Company Signs Distribution Deal with Adobe (June 22)
Searchforvideo.com Introduces New Editorial Team to Uncover the Web's Most Popular Online Video; Video Search Engine Leaps Ahead of Competition with Ability to Seek out Wider Range of New Interesting Content Faster Than Other Tools, Business Wire via Marketwatch (June 20)
"FUSA's Searchformedia Network, which includes the popular video discovery and sharing site www.searchforvideo.com , will leverage both software intelligence and human editors to identify popular and entertaining videos. This combination will provide the company with the ability to spot breakthrough videos and popular trends quicker than is typically possible today. As the team includes editors from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and knowledge specialties, this move will also help the organization ensure that it offers users access to online video from the widest possible range of topics, categories and languages."
Microsoft is dropping the Times New Roman font. Jack Kapica of the Globe and Mail reported that Microsoft will be using "... Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, Candara, Constantia and Corbel, as well as a Japanese font called Meiryo, with Calibri and Cambria the basic typefaces for Office 2007 ".
CYBERIA: Cooling the hype (June 23)
Music search sites that learn your taste, by Adam Pasick, Reuter News via Yahoo News (June 23) - Describes Pandora and Last.fm as music recommendation services. Has a few others.
The Government Domain - Google's New U.S. Government Search, By Peggy Garvin, LLRX (June 2006) - reviews Google's new (but some would say modified) US Government Search. There are limitations to web search -- "As many librarians know, web search is just one tool needed to research government information. It is best for granular information—such as finding mentions of a specific federal program or a law with a distinct title—and less helpful with exploring, understanding the context of information, or helping when you don’t know what you don’t know (which is much of the time)."
Librarians' Internet Index Selects Siderean Software to Improve Access to High Quality Web Content, Business Wire (June 26)
LII.org will be using Siderean Software to improve navigation through its directory of quality web sites.
Of interest: ""One of the key reasons for selecting Siderean's Seamark Navigator was its front-end navigation features," said Karen G. Schneider, director of LII. "By replacing our existing, cumbersome search capabilities with faceted navigation, our growing community of users will be able to quickly and easily browse our vast collection of peer-reviewed content. With more than 10 million hits per month and a repository of 18,000 items categorized in 14 main topics, 300 primary topics, and 5,000 subtopics, we needed a way for people to rapidly browse these collections to improve discovery. We also needed a way to highlight collections and feature new and custom collections. Faceted navigation allows us to illuminate these items. Users also will be able to avoid standard search 'dumps' or result lists, which lead to dead-ends. Instead, Siderean will present results in logical categories to enable users to navigate selections through LII's rich metadata. This is a tremendous benefit to our users.""
Jack Kapica on who's watching your surfing, Globe and Mail (June 28)
Discussion about changes at Sympatico to monitor customer activity -- "Bell Sympatico has announced a new service agreement with customers, allowing the company to "monitor or investigate" how their customers use their service and to "disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request." The new customer service agreement took effect June 15."
This along with a raise in rates!
Google Earth Add-Ons -- Maps, Models, and More, Tech Talk (June 24) - hacks and speciality tools for people who love Google Earth.
Microsoft Announces Some Updates to Its Book Search, ResearchBuzz (June 24)
University of California and the University of Toronto libraries are new participants in the Microsoft Windows Live Book Search.
THE NEW SHOWCASE WEBSITE WWW.MAPORAMA.COM OF MAPORAMA INTERNATIONAL ENTERS IN THE WEB 2.0 ERA , press release (June 29)
"Maporama International today announces the release of its new maps and itineraries website www.maporama.com and its entrance in the Web 2.0 era. The website has been totally redesigned, on the ergonomic level as well as on the technical side. The new interface, based on AJAX technology, brings to the web users new enriched functionalities, dynamic contents and a more rapid information display. Maporama International confirms with this launch its leadership and proves to its users and customers its technological advance on the market."
Also added the socially enhanced web search by Eurekster.
Finding That Site Again by Mary Ellen Bates, June 2006 -- Examines three tools for saving search results and findings - Google's Search History, A9.com, and Ask.com's Saved Results. Of these my favourite is Google's Search History.
Digg Expands into General News Content and Features, EContent (June 30)
"digg, Inc., a web community that enables an internet audience to prioritize news and content, has announced the rollout of new features and functionality for the digg.com website, including the ability for users to prioritize content in new subject areas, such as World and Business, Entertainment, Science, and Gaming. The company also announced the ability for users to customize their views based on specific areas of interest, and the application of the digg concept to videos. A public Beta of the new digg site is now available."
Springer Launches eBook Program, EContent (June 30)
"Springer Science+Business Media, a science, technology and medical book publisher, is launching a new eBook initiative that will allow students and researchers electronic access to more than 10,000 books."
Browse the journals and titles at SpringerLink.
Inside Google's New-Product Process -
The philosophy is, try a bunch of ideas, refine them, and see what survives, says Marissa Mayer, the search giant's product-launch czar - Business Week ONline (June 30)
Of interest: "When I look at Google News, where I know we have a user base that is very concerned with current events and likes to see multiple viewpoints, that feels like a really good place to integrate in something like Blog Search and/or Finance. So, we're looking at how we can integrate some of those pieces of functionality. It is hard for people to remember more than 5 or 10 products from a particular company. If we can take each of the products we have and make them even larger and more meaningful to people, I think there's a lot of benefit that could be had by both the users, because they don't have to remember quite as much; and also by us, because we see increased traffic."
"The Rise of DocuTicker: So Many Reports, So Little Time" By Shirl Kennedy, Freepint (June 22) Shirl Kennedy describes what she looks for when posting entries to Docuticker, "hand-picked selection of resources, reports and publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations."
Google Checkout by Elsa Wenzel, CNet (June 29)
"Google Checkout is designed to streamline online shopping by letting you shop with a single login name. This payment method lets you snap up goods found through Google searches or online stores without having to type your credit card number and address repeatedly. There are no fees for shopping with Google Checkout, and transactions are encrypted with the same SSL methods used by banks."
Has video clip.
Also see Hands On: Google's New Checkout Service - Google Checkout line moves fast, but selection is limited - by Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (June 29)
Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 29)
Major Web Browsers Getting Facelifts by Anick Jesdanun, AP via Topix (June 19) - updates to browsers: Opera, IE7, Firefox 2.
Web News Wranglers - "So much news on the Web, so little time to read it all. These tools and sites can help make you an incredibly well-informed person--in a hurry." - by Ryan Singel, PC World (June 23)
"What is the best news-management approach for you? We'll examine a number of sites, Web apps, and programs that can help you sort through the best news and commentary on the Net."
Master Firefox's Hidden Configuration Tools - "Through URIs, you can view Firefox's Web page cache, and see other details about the browser." - Scott Spanbauer, PC World (June 19)
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